school

All posts tagged school

Well, here we are, nearly at the end of the year. We have been flat out for the last few weeks doing, well, I’m not quite sure what, but here’s been a lot if it.

Rudolph the raspberry nosed biscuitdeer?

The kids are on school holiday as of today and we are all very happy about that.

Of course, as you can see by this picture, the kids last few days at school haven’t exactly been nose-to-the-grindstone stuff. They have watched movies, decorated biscuits and had parties.

Torturous stuff the poor pets. 😉

I aways look forward to the school holidays, but this time the end of the school year has come with a bit of sadness. Number 1 son is soon off to High School. How dare he grow up!? (For those of you in other countries, here in Australia the school year starts at the end of January and goes until, well, today).

Because of this High School business I have spent the last few weeks trying to be organised; paperwork, uniforms, paperwork, booklists, stationery….. the list goes on….

No matter how organised I think I am though, I know that worrying too much about it all is ridiculous. Having kids means that organisation is really just a thin facade hiding the ongoing chaos beneath.

One thing I have come to realise over the years is that if you don’t have children you can consider yourselves contributing considerably to the saving of the planet. Over time, each child seems to require the felling of entire rainforests in order to satisfy the excessive form-filling-out demanded by whatever schools they attend! The last few weeks have seen Number 1 bring home what I suspect is his own body weight in notices and forms.

The only piece of paperwork I would have actually welcomed would have been a checklist to make sure everything I needed to sign or hand in was accounted for! As it is I am relying on Number 1’s usual tendency to try to control everything to make sure he has handed over all the things I needed to see. I’m sure there are a few mums out there who will be finding some of those “must be returned by the 13th Dec” notices composting in the bottom of discarded school bags the day before school resumes at the end of January…

A highlight of all this rushing about was the yearly school performance. As usual it was a little disorganised and it didn’t go entirely according to plan, but everyone still had a great time.* For me though, one of the best parts of the night was at the very start before a single class had taken the stage.

Before the show begins they always show a montage of pictures taken through the year during school camps and activities. (One of the best ones was of number 1’s group when they did archery a few months ago. A few triumphant bow wielders standing over theatrically dead bodies lying in the grass, arrows clamped under their armpits). During the montage the song playing was Katy Perry’s Roar. Not high on my favourite song list until that moment.

During the performance the back rows of the theatre are occupied by all of the classes who aren’t needed on stage, so that everyone gets to see the show rather than being corralled backstage and getting underfoot. At the time the music started playing the entire school was seated back there, and as the song went on they all joined in. By halfway through all 270+ kids were standing on their chairs and singing their hearts out.

When the song finished, the kids, then every single person in the audience burst out laughing. It was brilliant. I’m never going to be able to hear that song again without hearing the happiness in their voices when they were all singing (well, shouting) together.

For those of you who aren’t Katy Perry fans, and I completely understand, here is a song for you.

The kids who are graduating always get up on stage at the end of the night and get to jump around and sing a song they all chose as their last performance finale. This year they chose On Top of the World by Imagine Dragons. Funnily enough it seems that the same monkey is in both clips!

*The performance is at a High School 30kms away, the nearest place there is a theatre large enough. This means they usually rehearse out in the playground or in their classrooms after clearing their desks out of the way, and the set changes are winged on the night. None of this means the performance on a proper stage will go smoothly but the kids always get a laugh out of the mistakes and so do we!

This Monday past was the first day back of term for the kids after two weeks holiday. As you can imagine Monday morning wasn’t a very cheerful time in our house!

Luckily for Number 1 son his teacher is wonderful, and she had bought a treasure in for him that completely changed his day.

Knowing what an animal lover he is, and that he is very interested in unusual things*, she had bought in a snake skin her family had uncovered in some of their travels.

Before you start thinking they were delighting in dead bodies, don’t worry. It wasn’t a skin that the snake was forcibly parted from, it was one that was happily shed!

When I wandered in to pick the kids up that afternoon Number 1 and his mate J bustled up, clutching a small plastic bag and absolutely bursting to show me the prize that was folded carefully inside. Clearly the trauma of returning to school was completely forgotten!

Amazing how such a small gesture can make a persons day isn’t it 😀

*And, really, just the fact that he is a twelve-year-old boy. There aren’t too many twelve-year-old boys out there who wouldn’t think a snake skin was cool, even if it was just to poke it with a stick from a safe distance. 😀

Sometimes when you see misbehaving children you wish that some sort of horrible punisment would be meted out to them right then and there. Annoyingly though, they usually get away with it and you have to go on your way wishing that their parents knew what discipline meant. Grrrr.

In 1938 a young Indian boy was misbehaving in class and was banished to the woodshed as punishment.

Unfortunately for the boy, a passing boa-constrictor took a fancy to him and being squeezed and eaten became part of the punishment.

When this terrible thing was discovered they freed the boy from the snake’s innards and he was found to be still alive, although unconcious. Sadly, he died later in hospital.

Can you imagine this teacher ever having discipline problems in his class again? I expect that once the terrible fate of this boy became known the mere threat of being sent to the shed was enough to make any of the other school children behave!

Of course, expecting any of them to ever go out to the shed for wood again might have been a bit much…

We are lucky enough to live in a fairly rural area. It is not unusual for mums to be waiting on the track behind the school car park in the afternoon with their kids ponies or horses for the ride home. Of course, they get stuck for a time in the midst of an adoring crowd of little girls begging for a pat, but an overabundance of affection is likely the most dangerous thing they will encounter on the trip.

These boys in 1943 encountered a kind of danger that no pony-riding kid would ever expect. Where on earth did an unexploded grenade come from!? Notice that the report doesn’t even mention what an unusual thing unattended ordnance is in Australia? Rockhampton is hardly a war zone!

One part of this article sounds even more strange though, the boys had a narrow escape on the way to school on a weekend? Most kids would consider a narrow miss with a grenade a fair trade if it got them out of going to school on a weekend!